... growing and hybridizing all kinds of plants in zone 6b Maryland since the 1980's.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Rosa carolina and F1 carolina X gallica

I can never get the pictures to turn out of these pale pink ones. But here goes anyway...
First here's Rosa carolina. It's a knee-high slightly suckering shrub that differs from the Rosa virginiana clones I grow in that it repeats on the tips of the new basal shoots and has less shiny foliage.

I took this picture with my phone (so it's kind of blurry and dark) but I was trying to show comparison of the foliage of carolina (top) and it's hybrid offspring from pollen of Rosa gallica. I'm holding the flowering stem of the hybrid at the bottom of the picture. The hybrid has bluer even more matte foliage with a little different shape. It also got more petal width and a slightly different fruit shape from gallica, while carolina definitely dominated the color. It took this one many years to build up some steam, but now it's proving to be pretty vigorous and strongly suckering. And the last two years it's rebloomed sparingly too.